Well, yeah. But it gave me a good opportunity to articulate some thoughts about the elite trend toward this sort of arrogant assumption-based situational consequentialism.
It is $#!+ like this explains why MAGA is anything more than a 10% fringe minority! 😠 It's awfully hard to NOT win a poker hand in which you are dealt 3 of a kind…but the Democrats keep coming up with ways to discard 2 of the 3 cards to keep the hand close! 🙄
It’s awful hard to have a society above the purely survival level if there isn’t some sort of social contract, and “don’t steal” is high on the list if you want any kind of function. Even pre-literate, foraging societies usually had some kind of rule/law that punished or at least discouraged stealing.
Obviously, shoplifting is bad and Piker is awful. Nobody outside of a few small bubbles believes it's ok. Even the most left-wing cities are clamping down hard on it and good for them.
I like your newsletter and you can write about whatever you want, but I don't think it's worth it to give those idiots any time. Almost nobody has any idea who they are. Even I hadn't heard of Tolentino and I'm terminally online.
If Democratic candidates start saying shoplifting is okay, I will worry, but I don't think that's going to happen. This whole discourse is exclusively an online phenomenon. There's nothing inherently wrong with taking part in online discourse, but it's important to remember how small of a world those of us who know about it live in.
Heh. Yes, but the more general approach of situational ethics based on strong, epistemically closed assumptions about statistical consequences needs to be criticized, and this was a good opportunity to criticize it.
You sound like me in the eighties when I was critiquing modern Chinese communist literature: it takes a lot of big words to say something much smaller.
Even if no Democratic candidates say this, Fox News at al Will quote the media personalities who do say it, and claim that all Democrats believe this. I've run into lots of posts on sub stack where conservatives attribute all sorts of crazy positions to Democrats, and when I ask them to name a specific politician or candidate who said this, they can't, but they continue to believe it anyway.
Fully agree. I’ve followed Jia for a long time, and find her usually to be a thoughtful writer. This was a poor take…but to me, just that. A take. Not a representation of the Democratic Party platform, or even something they should concern themselves with.
(Piker on the other hand, is as Noah rightly describes, a pure attention seeking “shock jock”)
Piker is a nepo baby - a literal nepo (nephew) to Cenk Uygur, and we know what he named that YouTube/TV show of his after. Shock jockery (if that’s a word) runs in that family.
Tolerating petty crime is one of the dumbest things democracies can do. It is amazing micro-celebs like Piker and Tolentino can have such stupid beliefs. No wonder Trump won.
Gotta bang my drum for the BART (local train system) fare gates that are made to discourage “fare jumping:” They work, not just by making people pay their fares (and increasing revenue), but, hours spent on station maintenance is down, trains are cleaner, safer, quieter, and you don’t have to check a seat in the back of the car before sit down in case there is ground in Mickey D’s ketchup or worse (a LOT worse, as in human waste). It turns out that people who are willing to break the social contract in one instance (fare evasion) are all too willing to break it in others (harassing fellow passengers, blasting music without earphones, getting food on the seats, *urinating* on the seats, littering everywhere, pissing in the escalators).
What’s nice is now ridership is up - ridership of nice law-abiding people who treat public property and fellow passengers with respect.
There really is something to the “broken windows” theory.
I surmise you wrote this because the Cartoons Hate Her commentariat overlaps with yours quite a bit (or at least is a homing ground for normie libs), not because, I hope, people took the obnoxious nepo baby seriously. (Unless you were called upon to give a lecture at your local middle school. 12 year olds can have some peculiar ideas.) Hasan Piker, much as he might like to be against The Man, is, in fact, The Man. Just like most of the OG Communists came from nice middle-class backgrounds.
Americans visit cities in Scandinavia, or the Netherlands, or Japan, and wonder why America can’t have the nice things these countries - or at least the large cities in these countries - can. The answer is “social trust.” And how do you get social trust? By, among other things, not stealing just because you can, or because it’s going to somehow stick it to Jeff Bezos. If we want the kind of society most liberals - hell, most sane conservatives too - want, then we have to have that social trust. Lack of social trust is part of the reason we got Trump (and of course he’s played that like a fiddle, creating worse distrust).
Yes.. a very key economic idea "social trust." I don't frequent places such as NYC, SF... but in the places where I live (suburbs in US)... social trust is quite high. ideas such as "social trust," "concern for the common good," and "common values around fairness" tend to be fundamental in economic development and growth of a society.
" But stealing from stores, blowing up pipelines, and gunning down corporate executives are not good examples of situations where we need fewer rules and more individual judgement."
Even putting these in the same sentence as moral equivalences is ridiculous. Most young people don't shoplift for any of these reasons. They do it either because " they want it" or because "it's a thrill". You can throw flowery prose around all of the arguments, but the reality is different. This is not "well said" as some would have it. It is misconstrued. There are some who shoplift because they need it, but they are a minority and if you are in that minority I personally forgive you.
Please put the big words and verbosity away. The vast majority of shoplifting is done by young people who "want it" or want the rush.
When politics and thinking take over morality, law, and common sense of extremists of any party we know they are horribly wrong. Progressives may have heart but no brains or pragmatism. The exreme right is also devoid of moarality, common sense, and civility. Democracy depends on duty and honor by all. We are losing both.
"Do you understand anything I'm saying?" shouted Moist. "You can't just go around killing people!"
"Why Not? You Do." The golem lowered his arm.
"What?" Moist. "I do not! Who told you that?"
"I Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Three Eight People," said the golem calmly.
"I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr. Pump. I may be--all the things you know I am, but I am *not* a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!"
"No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded, And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr. Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Did Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr. Lipvig. For The Joy Of The Game."
How much of this is downstream of how rich pseudo lefty progressives imagine who criminals are? It feels like they read Oliver Twist and never updated their priors. All criminals including murderers are just Dickensian victims of greater social crimes not opportunistic people who think they can get away with getting something for free while someone else pays the cost. I worked at McDonalds for about 6 years and several people I worked with had committed crimes and been to prison. When asked about this they would say “oh yeah I deserved to go man…I was a fucking idiot.”
I have a friend, retired after decades as a district attorney, who said that most “career criminals” (as opposed to the Young and Dumb who try it once) are stupid, too stupid to get a real job. Because there is actually a lot more job security, upward mobility, and respectability even in a fast food job. When you look at “returns to working at Mickey D’s” versus “returns to criminality” Mickey D’s wins. Even if it’s not a job most people want or crave, it’s still a respectable job that you can put on your resume.
This needed to be said because the New York Times gave it prominence. It also needed to be said because the free press did not do a good job of explaining why it was so terrible. At bottom, it is simply a self indictment by the editors of the New York Times.
Both of those characters fail the "would leave them alone to housesit my cat" or "would let them take my 7 year old to lunch" tests. If we just applied that kind of thought experiment it would remove all sorts of bad and crazy from policy influence and elected positions.
I wonder how the protagonists would react to being robbed or mugged for some perceived affront or perhaps on retaliation for their sanctioned “micro looting”. Funny how they can justify such lawless action when most people want to work hard and be able to provide safety and security for their family and friends and enjoy the fruit of their labor such as an item or good that they purchased and own.
Piker et al are actually the elite they denigrate and are so far removed from reality that they can’t see how foolish they are. Thanks Noah for spelling it out in real terms
God these people are so irritating. What caused me to lose my mind when I watched this podcast was not outrage over the immorality and economic illiteracy of their positions, because as you note it’s pretty clear they are not literally or strongly held. They’re just LARPing bimbos who think it makes them look cool. It bothers me most that the New York Times structured this discussion from the start as a facile validation of the premise - it never gets beyond taking the most simplistic assumptions at face value, like the idea that corporations paying lower than expected taxes due to lawfully writing off capital expenditures or whatever, a democratically agreed upon feature of our tax code which whether you believe it is working or not has an intended purpose of promoting growth, is morally the same as an individual (a wealthy individual for the purposes of this podcast) stealing from a corporation, which has no intended positive effect on society. We are so close to taking the country back from MAGA lunatics and institutions like the NYT are determined to continue to normalize lunatic exhibitionists to represent our tribe. Please just shut up!
I cant believe you had to write this article. Jeez
Well, yeah. But it gave me a good opportunity to articulate some thoughts about the elite trend toward this sort of arrogant assumption-based situational consequentialism.
Sounds like we need some new elites
It is $#!+ like this explains why MAGA is anything more than a 10% fringe minority! 😠 It's awfully hard to NOT win a poker hand in which you are dealt 3 of a kind…but the Democrats keep coming up with ways to discard 2 of the 3 cards to keep the hand close! 🙄
That this needs to be said is… well.. something. Well said.
1000 BC: Thou shalt not steal and variations thereof - Old Testament, Vedas, Zoroaster, Confucius, etc.
2000 AD: Big box is okay, though. - Edgelords
Regression.
It’s awful hard to have a society above the purely survival level if there isn’t some sort of social contract, and “don’t steal” is high on the list if you want any kind of function. Even pre-literate, foraging societies usually had some kind of rule/law that punished or at least discouraged stealing.
I think there’s been a few other relevant ones in between by Victor Hugo and on Broadway.
Obviously, shoplifting is bad and Piker is awful. Nobody outside of a few small bubbles believes it's ok. Even the most left-wing cities are clamping down hard on it and good for them.
I like your newsletter and you can write about whatever you want, but I don't think it's worth it to give those idiots any time. Almost nobody has any idea who they are. Even I hadn't heard of Tolentino and I'm terminally online.
If Democratic candidates start saying shoplifting is okay, I will worry, but I don't think that's going to happen. This whole discourse is exclusively an online phenomenon. There's nothing inherently wrong with taking part in online discourse, but it's important to remember how small of a world those of us who know about it live in.
Heh. Yes, but the more general approach of situational ethics based on strong, epistemically closed assumptions about statistical consequences needs to be criticized, and this was a good opportunity to criticize it.
You sound like me in the eighties when I was critiquing modern Chinese communist literature: it takes a lot of big words to say something much smaller.
Even if no Democratic candidates say this, Fox News at al Will quote the media personalities who do say it, and claim that all Democrats believe this. I've run into lots of posts on sub stack where conservatives attribute all sorts of crazy positions to Democrats, and when I ask them to name a specific politician or candidate who said this, they can't, but they continue to believe it anyway.
Fox watchers don't decide elections. They can think whatever they want. When normal, non-political people start believing it that's the time to worry.
Fully agree. I’ve followed Jia for a long time, and find her usually to be a thoughtful writer. This was a poor take…but to me, just that. A take. Not a representation of the Democratic Party platform, or even something they should concern themselves with.
(Piker on the other hand, is as Noah rightly describes, a pure attention seeking “shock jock”)
Piker is a nepo baby - a literal nepo (nephew) to Cenk Uygur, and we know what he named that YouTube/TV show of his after. Shock jockery (if that’s a word) runs in that family.
Tolerating petty crime is one of the dumbest things democracies can do. It is amazing micro-celebs like Piker and Tolentino can have such stupid beliefs. No wonder Trump won.
Just solve and punish petty crime!
Gotta bang my drum for the BART (local train system) fare gates that are made to discourage “fare jumping:” They work, not just by making people pay their fares (and increasing revenue), but, hours spent on station maintenance is down, trains are cleaner, safer, quieter, and you don’t have to check a seat in the back of the car before sit down in case there is ground in Mickey D’s ketchup or worse (a LOT worse, as in human waste). It turns out that people who are willing to break the social contract in one instance (fare evasion) are all too willing to break it in others (harassing fellow passengers, blasting music without earphones, getting food on the seats, *urinating* on the seats, littering everywhere, pissing in the escalators).
What’s nice is now ridership is up - ridership of nice law-abiding people who treat public property and fellow passengers with respect.
There really is something to the “broken windows” theory.
I surmise you wrote this because the Cartoons Hate Her commentariat overlaps with yours quite a bit (or at least is a homing ground for normie libs), not because, I hope, people took the obnoxious nepo baby seriously. (Unless you were called upon to give a lecture at your local middle school. 12 year olds can have some peculiar ideas.) Hasan Piker, much as he might like to be against The Man, is, in fact, The Man. Just like most of the OG Communists came from nice middle-class backgrounds.
Americans visit cities in Scandinavia, or the Netherlands, or Japan, and wonder why America can’t have the nice things these countries - or at least the large cities in these countries - can. The answer is “social trust.” And how do you get social trust? By, among other things, not stealing just because you can, or because it’s going to somehow stick it to Jeff Bezos. If we want the kind of society most liberals - hell, most sane conservatives too - want, then we have to have that social trust. Lack of social trust is part of the reason we got Trump (and of course he’s played that like a fiddle, creating worse distrust).
Yes.. a very key economic idea "social trust." I don't frequent places such as NYC, SF... but in the places where I live (suburbs in US)... social trust is quite high. ideas such as "social trust," "concern for the common good," and "common values around fairness" tend to be fundamental in economic development and growth of a society.
"I have only shoplifted one thing in my entire life: a copy of Abbie Hoffman’s book Steal This Book."
Noah, does this factoid indicate that you are dangerously suggestible?
" But stealing from stores, blowing up pipelines, and gunning down corporate executives are not good examples of situations where we need fewer rules and more individual judgement."
Even putting these in the same sentence as moral equivalences is ridiculous. Most young people don't shoplift for any of these reasons. They do it either because " they want it" or because "it's a thrill". You can throw flowery prose around all of the arguments, but the reality is different. This is not "well said" as some would have it. It is misconstrued. There are some who shoplift because they need it, but they are a minority and if you are in that minority I personally forgive you.
Please put the big words and verbosity away. The vast majority of shoplifting is done by young people who "want it" or want the rush.
"Their mental models of economics and politics are a dense tangle of undergrad-level misunderstandings, leftist memes, and political talking points"
Thanks Noah, exactly correct.
Both our left and right wing friends allow their emotions and confirmation bias to overrule a reasoned search for knowledge, reality and truth.
When politics and thinking take over morality, law, and common sense of extremists of any party we know they are horribly wrong. Progressives may have heart but no brains or pragmatism. The exreme right is also devoid of moarality, common sense, and civility. Democracy depends on duty and honor by all. We are losing both.
"Do you understand anything I'm saying?" shouted Moist. "You can't just go around killing people!"
"Why Not? You Do." The golem lowered his arm.
"What?" Moist. "I do not! Who told you that?"
"I Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Three Eight People," said the golem calmly.
"I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr. Pump. I may be--all the things you know I am, but I am *not* a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!"
"No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded, And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr. Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Did Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr. Lipvig. For The Joy Of The Game."
--Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
How much of this is downstream of how rich pseudo lefty progressives imagine who criminals are? It feels like they read Oliver Twist and never updated their priors. All criminals including murderers are just Dickensian victims of greater social crimes not opportunistic people who think they can get away with getting something for free while someone else pays the cost. I worked at McDonalds for about 6 years and several people I worked with had committed crimes and been to prison. When asked about this they would say “oh yeah I deserved to go man…I was a fucking idiot.”
I have a friend, retired after decades as a district attorney, who said that most “career criminals” (as opposed to the Young and Dumb who try it once) are stupid, too stupid to get a real job. Because there is actually a lot more job security, upward mobility, and respectability even in a fast food job. When you look at “returns to working at Mickey D’s” versus “returns to criminality” Mickey D’s wins. Even if it’s not a job most people want or crave, it’s still a respectable job that you can put on your resume.
Now I just want to imagine Jim Carrey from Liar Liar yelling into a phone at Piker “stop breaking the law asshole!!”
This needed to be said because the New York Times gave it prominence. It also needed to be said because the free press did not do a good job of explaining why it was so terrible. At bottom, it is simply a self indictment by the editors of the New York Times.
Both of those characters fail the "would leave them alone to housesit my cat" or "would let them take my 7 year old to lunch" tests. If we just applied that kind of thought experiment it would remove all sorts of bad and crazy from policy influence and elected positions.
I wonder how the protagonists would react to being robbed or mugged for some perceived affront or perhaps on retaliation for their sanctioned “micro looting”. Funny how they can justify such lawless action when most people want to work hard and be able to provide safety and security for their family and friends and enjoy the fruit of their labor such as an item or good that they purchased and own.
Piker et al are actually the elite they denigrate and are so far removed from reality that they can’t see how foolish they are. Thanks Noah for spelling it out in real terms
You just *know* they’d scream “LOCK HIM UP!” Rules for what happens to me but definitely not what happens to thee because Thou Art The Man.
God these people are so irritating. What caused me to lose my mind when I watched this podcast was not outrage over the immorality and economic illiteracy of their positions, because as you note it’s pretty clear they are not literally or strongly held. They’re just LARPing bimbos who think it makes them look cool. It bothers me most that the New York Times structured this discussion from the start as a facile validation of the premise - it never gets beyond taking the most simplistic assumptions at face value, like the idea that corporations paying lower than expected taxes due to lawfully writing off capital expenditures or whatever, a democratically agreed upon feature of our tax code which whether you believe it is working or not has an intended purpose of promoting growth, is morally the same as an individual (a wealthy individual for the purposes of this podcast) stealing from a corporation, which has no intended positive effect on society. We are so close to taking the country back from MAGA lunatics and institutions like the NYT are determined to continue to normalize lunatic exhibitionists to represent our tribe. Please just shut up!